How To Eliminate Fleas From Your Dogs Completely

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Nothing is as bad as having your dog diagnosed with fleas. However, unless you have taken stringent measures to keep fleas off your pets, you may not be lucky, especially during the flea season.

You shouldn’t worry, though. With proper medication, you can completely eliminate a flea infestation in your dogs and your home as well. Read along to learn how to control a flea infestation on your dogs.

How to Spot Fleas on Your Dog

If you’ve had a flea infestation in your home, then you know that they can take a toll on pets as well as humans. Apart from making your dog uncomfortable, fleas can negatively affect your dog’s health if not treated.

While fleas are small, they can have a significant impact on your dog’s overall health. That’s why you need to take measures to ensure that your dogs are flea from fleas.

However, spotting fleas on your dog is not an easy task. This is because they are very tiny, coupled with the fact that they’re brightly colored. What’s more, flea eggs tend to fall off your dog, making it hard for pet parents to take note of them.

Even so, you can easily identify whether your dog has fleas by using a flea comb. Ideally, a flea comb will not just help you identify adult fleas but flea eggs and flea dirt as well.

You should also be on the lookout for scratching signs in your dog as dogs tend to scratch more due to flea bites.

As a responsible pet parent, you should also look for flea signs in your homestead, especially the sleeping areas.

How to Kill Fleas on Your Dog

Now that you know that your dog has fleas, it’s time to take action. As earlier mentioned, failure to treat a flea infestation can have far-reaching effects on your dog’s health. While there are many over-the-counter flea medications, we would advise you to consult your vet.

Among other medications, your vet may recommend Capstar flea preventive for dogs. Capstar is among the most effective oral flea treatments for dogs and is easy to use.

Ideally, you will need to add them to your dog’s food or give them to your dog as a treat. The best thing is that Capstar for dogs starts working within 30 minutes. The active ingredient in Capstar is nitenpyram. It will enter into your dog’s bloodstream, and the fleas will ingest it when they bite the dog. Capstar flea preventives work by attacking the fleas’ nervous system, which causes their death. In most cases, about 90% of adults will be dead within six months.

Nitenpyram will not remain in your dog’s body for long. As such, you can safely use Capstar for dogs every day until you have eliminated all fleas. Capstar can also be administered to puppies at least four weeks old, although they should weigh not less than 2.2 pounds. It is also safe to administer Capstar to nursing and lactating dogs.

So, Can You Use Capstar to Treat a Tick Infestation?

While Capstar flea tablets are effective in eliminating a flea infestation, they cannot be used to treat a tick infestation. This is because nitenpyram cannot kill ticks. If your dog has ticks, ask your vet about the effective medication for a tick infestation.

Even so, for you to get rid of fleas when using Capstar, you will need to be consistent. As earlier stated, you may be required to administer Capstar to your dog until you have eliminated all fleas. Ideally, it may take up to 30 days to eradicate a complete flea life cycle. You will also need to kill fleas in your homestead, as you will see below.

How to Kill Eliminate Fleas in Your Compound

Just like it is important to eliminate fleas on your dog, it is also essential to kill fleas in your homestead as well. Failure to do this might mean that the flea problem will keep returning. To that end, here are some steps you can take to clean your homestead for fleas:

Using a vacuum to clean all surfaces in your house is an excellent way to get rid of fleas in your home. Clean all the surfaces where fleas are likely to hide and then seal the vacuum bag and dispose of it safely.

Wash your dog’s bedding with hot and ten use a hot dryer to dry them. If possible, it is better to replace the beddings with new ones.

You can also opt to use flea sprays to kill the fleas in your home. The best thing is that you can get flea sprays that won’t harm the pets and humans.